Updates and Rants, 10-22-11

October has been as busy as September. We have had something planned every weekend since early September now and we are looking at not having a free weekend well into November. I have forgotten what it's like to wake up on a Saturday and not get showered and dressed until 1pm. Since September we've gone to Monterey, Daly City, Placerville, had people over, seen a couple of our best friends get married, had some great times. I'm not complaining, but it will be nice one of these days to just not go anywhere.

I took my ASL midterm last week and scored a 49 out of 50 points. I was seriously nervous, too! I thought for sure I had at most a C. I could have sworn my teacher looked confused half of the time, but my nerves were just playing tricks on me.

There are people in class that are just helluv rude. They talk out loud on purpose and giggle about it. Not only is it disrespectful to our Deaf teacher, but it's also distracting while we're trying to get instruction from him. One douche-ass stood in front of the class during an exercise where we were describing relationships and made something up about having a girlfriend. That's fine, but when he sat down he said so everyone could hear, "I'm actually single," just to get a laugh. They will all lose the last laugh when their grades come in. My friends and I are telling the teacher who and when the speaking is going on. Yup, I'm a snitch and I don't care.

It's one thing when people whisper to each other to help each other out, but it's another entirely to speak just because the professor can't hear. You would think that in the second level ASL class these students would have a little bit of respect for Deaf people and for the language, but no. I'm sure you've heard this rant before, but it's something that really bothers me. Anyway, that's all the rant I have for tonight.

Mom's up this weekend. We've been hanging out, going to the jazz festival downtown. We went to Davis Common to the Main stage at first. After awhile we realized there was another stage across the street. We went over and listened for awhile. We painted on their art wall in front of the Natsoulas Gallery and then went in and showed mom the staircase of art and the roof. She loved it.

Mom took Chris and I to Ali Baba's for dinner tonight and it was wonderful as ever. It's been a great day. Next weekend, Halloween party!! Weekend after that, Eid!! I'm making cake pops, chili and mulled cider. I was thinking about making a pumpkin pie, but I will probably just buy one, with all the cooking I'll already be doing. Here's to the holiday season!!!

Racist and Audist Women in an ASL Class

It's been a terribly long week. Thursday ASL class was great, as always, minus the girl (I'll call her Helga) in the hallway before class talking over me and trying to belittle me while I was asking another girl (I'll call her Charro for sake of clarity), why she thought that the faults of Affirmative Action were worse than the conditions that cause the need for it (which Charro couldn't answer and only could give a, "it's my right to complain" spiel while admitting that as a woman and a Latina she would be getting the short end of the stick).  She also didn't know the first thing about Affirmative Action, not realizing that California doesn't even have Affirmative Action in place anymore and that Affirmative Action is not a "quota," but the quotas were put in place as one way to uphold Affirmative Action. Boy did she look dumb.

She looks white, talks white and is light skinned enough to "pass" for white, so I could see why she had a problem with Affirmative Action "treating her special for being Latina". If Affirmative Action gave her a better chance at fighting discrimination or getting into a better college, she would then have to admit that despite her and her family's hard work to be like the majority and forget their roots, she did have a history that didn't fit in with the White-All-American stereotype that minorities have been forced to conform to for so long. It's sad though, because I know so many people who do enjoy their heritage without the pressure to conform.

It was really hard to state my position clearly as Helga (who is, in fact white, and very angry about Affirmative Action possibly hurting one white person out of millions who constantly get treated better than their counterparts of different races) was talking over me. I finally told her to read a book. She was frustrating me so bad, I felt my tongue slipping over words. I started feeling shaky every time she interrupted me. I think ten years ago I probably would have just slapped her.

What wasn't surprising is that before this exchange, she and Charro had been complaining about having to write full paragraphs in their responses on the D2L posts for class. Helga even stated, "I wish he would have explained that in the first place," despite the fact that the syllabus we read out loud in class clearly laid out the guidelines for posting. These two have pretty clearly stated before class that they don't like the teacher. Helga felt the quiz was too hard with the teacher putting six blank spots for five possible answers (you know, so the last one isn't a freebie), because obviously she has some kind of trouble with multiple choice.

Later in the week, I went back on D2L and Charro had posted a response in that know-it-all, defender of rights way of hers to another classmate. The original classmate was responding to an article written by a political pundit that was very anti-Deaf and anti-ASL. The classmate used a rhetorical question to make a point, saying, "What right does he have..." Well, Charro thought that the classmate meant to take away this pundits right of free speech and had to mention something about that. She finally found a whole paragraph to write, though, so good for her.

Later in class, one of their friends who we'll call-what's a good crack-head name? She looks like she's been torn up by some kind of stimulant in her past-well, we'll just call her Cracky. Cracky, before class, is constantly loud and tells the entire hallway all her personal details and opinions because she needs the attention. I wrote about her earlier on this blog. Remember the girl that thought the teacher made up the No English in Class rule because he was worried about what we were saying? Yeah, her.

Anyway, she was talking during class Thursday while the teacher was teaching a lesson. So rude! So I told on her. Because she wasn't just talking to someone next to her or whispering for help from a neighbor. She was talking out loud because our teacher is Deaf. Her neighbors (Charro is one, though I don't know if she participated) were laughing at her antics.

Yes, I'm a tattle tale. I mentioned it to a classmate who pointed out Cracky's D2L post where she wrote a response to another student that said, "Wow, you really stepped it up a notch with the boring and quotes," incorrect grammar is hers. Three women in my class too stupid to live. How does this happen?

So what do I do about it? I have to go to class and be with these people until December! Well, I decided that I'd just continue tattle taling because I've never done it before (my motto in High School was 'snitches get stitches'), and it actually felt good.

Second, I decided that I'd use it as fuel. This week at Cross Fit I'm going to kick some ass. Also, I decided to write a very well researched post for this week's discussion topic. I already posted it. It's about four paragraphs, so I know Charro and Helga probably won't even read it, but I had a great time writing it.

I also should probably do some meditating, just for good measure. Eventually, I'll just forgive these three because there's really no other way they could have acted. I'm a hard determinist and they are hard wired to make the poor decisions they make. Nothing I can do about it.

So that's that. Long work week, long school week. I'll have a weekend update later.